Lion’s Head Meatballs

World on a plate is a blogging cultural exchange. On the last Sunday of the month, bloggers from all over the world get together to interpret a food through the lens of their home country cooking. Each blogger will produce a wonderful dish featuring the food chosen that is typical of her/his home country and will tell us about the dish. For this month group post, we will be featuring meatballs. Please click on the link below to find out how meatballs are prepared in different parts of the world and here is my contribution, the Lion’s Head meatballs.

Lion’s head Meatballs is a dish that is made to depict Lions head so don’t freak out just yet as it’s made out of pork and not lions. This Eastern Chinese dish is made out of enormous pork meatballs stewed with vegetables. There are two versions: first, the plain one where meatballs are stewed or steamed with Napa cabbages and second, the red version where it is cooked with cabbage, bamboo shoots and/or tofu in a soy-sauce-based sauce. The minced meat used in this dish is the fatty variant giving it that unique gelatinous texture. The large meatball resembles lion’s head and the chinese cabbage as its mane. It originated from Jiangsu province and it became and a part of Shanghai cuisine with the influx of migrants during the late 19th to early 20th century.

A really unique meatball dish which was recently introduced to me here in New Zealand by one of my close Chinese friend. It is simple and a good variation to the common meatball dishes.

That name sounds cool. I am intrigued by the ginger etc. in this recipe. That sounds so unique, and so flavorful! I already told Biren that the Asian versions of this dish make the European ones sound almost bland, but I guess it’s just another way of eating it, right? 🙂

True, also Asian food may look strong in taste because flavours used in Asian dishes are contrasting like honey and fish sauce or chilli and yoghurt unlike Western dishes which combines tastes that are similar like cream and eggs or tomato and wine.